How TiborA started their logo design journey

Summary

New camera lens review site is looking for a clean, modern web site design and matching logo. Simple, elegant (web 2.0?) style, table-less design, valid codes are expected. (The brief is a bit lengthy, but I didn't want to leave the details out.)

Update: August 14, 2007 23:09:00 CET
I WILL ACCEPT UNCODED ENTRIES AS WELL!

Company name

LensBuyersGuide.com

What inspires you and how do you envision the design for your business?

Desired Color Scheme:
it is totally up to the designer

Update: August 14, 2007 23:09:00 CET
I WILL ACCEPT UNCODED ENTRIES AS WELL!

Name: LensBuyersGuide.com
Content: LensBuyersGuide.com will be a camera lens review site, with an extensive lens database.
Tagline: [there is none at the moment, but you should leave space for it below the logo in the header]
Prize: $650 (total) + an extra (see the last section of this brief)

Logo
The ideal logo is
- simple and elegant
- contains the whole name (including .com)
- the three words are easy to read out (separated somehow)
- since the whole site is using sans-serif font, the logo should match this
There are no restrictions for color, although it should go along well with the site design.
The winner will take the $150 prize. We might announce a winner for logo before the the final date!

Website
The ideal website design is
- fixed with, optimized to 1024x768 pixel resolution (aligned to the center if the browser window is wider than the content)
- using only Arial for texts
- having all texts written as text (not graphics)
- clear, easy to read
- consistent on all pages

We will need a template for the following pages
- front page
- lens page with tabs to include data-sheet (specification, images of the lens and short description), readers reviews, test images
- article page
- lens list page
In this contest we are expecting the entrants to submit front page design first. On August 13 we will go through the entries and select maximum 3 that we like. Than we will ask the candidates to make one sub-page in the same style, and to provide one part of the page coded. The quality of the html and the css will count in the final decision

Some page elements that are common on all pages
- header
+ logo on the left
+ 728Ã—90 pixel ad on the right
+ menu bar underneath (more details about the menu below)
+ language selection on the right side of the menu bar (custom, dhtml drop down menu)
- sidebar (except front page) wide enough to accomodate a 336 pixel wide ad space
- link collection (almost like a footer with links to the most important contents of the site; the links are organized into groups.
- footer (with the common links and texts)

Menu
I want a horizontal menu bar with the submenus opening as another horizontal menu bar underneath the first one. The third level should open as a third bar. There will be no more than 3 levels in the menu. The selected (or hovered) item (which has its submenu opened) should have a little upward pointing arrow in the bottom (like here but centered in the item: http://www.newzealand.com/travel/de…-page.cfm)

Sidebar (except the front page)
search box on the top of the side bar
there will be a simple lens listing here (a checkbox with a lens name in each row, compare buttons above and below the listings)
this lens listing will be repeated under different titles (e.g. similar lenses, bookmarks, etc.)
there will be small data-sheets in the sidebar (they will include 6-8 rows of data (name and value), the style should be similar to the main data-sheets)

Front page structure
I like the idea of having blocks that have different number of columns following each other (like here: http://www.bartelme.at/). The blocks should be clearly separated, but it is up to you how you do it (I kinda like the different color thing, but I could imagine other ideas working well)
- header as described above
- 1st block: 3 equally sized columns:
+ 1st column: featured review
+ 2st column: simple search box (field and a search button with a dinamically generated suggestion box while typing);
+ 3nd column: 3 drop down menus and a horizontal slider (each having a label for describing the function); both columns should have a few lines of description under their titles
- 2nd block: 3 equally sized columns, all three containing content listing with title and 2 lines of text and a ~100 pixel wide image
- 3rd block: 2 equally sized columns: with similar listings as above
- 4th block: tabbed content, each tab has similar content listings as the blocks above, but each tab should contain 3 columns (sounds complicated, but basically the same as above; the extra item is the tab bar with the tabs)

Sub-page structure
All the rest of the site should have 2 columns: left wide, right narrow (sidebar, accommodating a 336 pixel wide standard ad).

Lens page
The left part of the sub-page structure should contain the following:
- Lens name
- One photo of the lens, with 5 other smaller photos below the main photo.
- Lens description on the right side of the photos
- Tabs (below the photos and the description) to select various related contents, like
+ specifications: a table of data pairs (this should be table element in the code)
+ readers' reviews (with rating stars and sample image thumbnail), review writing form (name, e-mail, text, 2 drop down menus, star rating, file upload field, submit)
+ test images (thumbnails)
+ accessories listings (simple product listings, like the ones on other pages

Article page
Regular article page (title, date, author, subtitles (two levels), data table design, related links). We want to have options to align images on the left and on the right side, to have one large image in the middle and two images in the middle side by side. Winner might be offered an option to make an extra selector after this contest is over.

Colors, styles
No colors set, they are totally up to the designer. Keep in mind that this is a review site, full of information, not a design gallery. So everything should be simple. Fresh, web 2.0 colors (if there are such), gradients, reflections, shadows and rounded corners are welcome if they improve and not clutter the site. I like those sites where the main content looks like it is on a separate sheet (that has shadows) that is placed over the rest of the page (like this: http://www.basecamphq.com/images/ba…board.png). But I am sure you can come up with other great ideas as well. There is no need for photos in the design. The content will have more than enough of those.

Code
I want the site to be coded with HTML (not XHTML), table-less design (yahoo YUI Library CSS elements: reset, fonts and grids is recommended), external CSS file for all the design related stuff.Where appropriate you can save more image pieces as one image to save requests at download time. All codes should pass validation and the page should look the same in all A grade browsers.

File formats
Logo: .ai
web site: .psd and coded (as described above)

Prize with some extras
I am not sure how common it is, but I can offer a text link from all footers to the designers web site (both logo and site designer). Considering that it will soon be a site with PR 5-7 pages (~a thousand pages at the beginning), it can be a nice extra.